Individuals and enterprises are relying more and more on electronic communications to conduct their affairs and their business. Evidence of this can be seen with the large increase in electronic commerce. In fact, more and more consumers are now engaged in on-line banking or stock trading.
Electronic communication that involves financial matters is typically dealt with in different manners than a general electronic mail communication between friends. That is, a variety of encryption and/or secure communication protocols or channels may be implemented for a financial transaction, which would not typically be implemented for personal emails.
Generally, in a financial transaction both the sender and the receiver of that transaction are performing pursuant to some predefined agreement. So, a bank may guarantee a transaction if it successfully completes it for a customer, assuming the customer conformed to certain guidelines or rules during that transaction. In another example, a securities trader may be assured a buy or sell order is placed if confirmation is received and the trader complied with rules or regulations of the broker.
Some financial transactions may engage in more complex communications for the purposes of assuring security and privacy of the parties involved. For example, dynamic keys associated with custom encryption may be exchanged during the transaction between the parties involved in that transaction.
One problem that may result with more complex secure communications is that one of the parties during certain points of the transaction may not receive the information necessary to complete the transaction. For example, an encrypted transaction having a necessary decryption key may have a key that fails in some manner such that the transaction cannot be completed, since the receiver only has the decrypted transaction and does not have a valid key necessary to decrypt the details of that transaction.
When such a situation occurs, the receiver may repudiate or cancel the transaction because the receiver was unable to complete it, since the receiver never acquired the necessary key to decrypt the details of the transaction. This can be problematic in a highly dynamic and automated financial environment where senders are relying on the transaction to complete successfully.
Therefore, improved techniques for assuring a receiver receives proper information for an electronic communication are desirable.